Working with children with RTS
Children with RTS tend to be happy and social, but a small percentage prefer solitary play. They tend to make contact easily and know no strangers. They can be stubborn and inflexible with their views, but on the whole they are generally co-operative. They have short attention spans and find it difficult to concentrate.
Make learning fun. Singing instructions or doing things with music make learning more enjoyable for them. Talking to them or listening to recordings, helps their learning, even if they have no spoken language.
Speech and Language Therapy should be started as early as possible. As a small percentage of children will not develop speech, signing should be considered initially as a form of communication as well as visuals and/or symbols. However, they can often understand much more than they can express.
They can display autistic traits including rocking, spinning and hand-flapping, but they often grow out of these stimming habits. They tend to have repetitive behaviour and can get ‘stuck in a loop’. They may enjoy lining up toys, turning patterned objects the ‘right’ way round and needing to touch things in a certain way or a particular number of times. As children with RTS get older there tends to be an increase in mood swings, temper tantrums and aggressive outbursts.
Teaching them requires lots of patience and perseverance. They work well with routines, but care should be taken to ensure they remain flexible and can cope with change. They are generally not fond of large or noisy groups.
They often have very high pain thresholds, so sometimes a change of behaviour may be the only indication there is a problem as they cannot always articulate their pain.
SERC / Newbridge School
Barley Lane Campus, 258 Barley Lane
Goodmayes
Ilford, IG3 8XS
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